Amsco Chapter 14 The Americas on the Eve of Globalization Identifications

Mississippian

Mississippian

The first large scale civilization in North America.

Great Sun

Natchez ruler. He was entitled to marry several wives and to maintain servants; upon his death his wives and some servants, along with any others who wished to join him in the afterlife, were ritually sacrificed.

Toltec

Nahuatl-speaking tribe who held sway over what is now central Mexico from the 10th to the 12th century CE. The name has many meanings: an "urbanite," a "cultured" person, and, literally, the "reed person," derived from their urban center, Tollan ("Place of the Reeds"), near the modern town of Tula, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Mexico City.

Aztec

Nahuatl-speaking people who in the 15th and early 16th centuries ruled a large empire in what is now central and southern Mexico. The name derived from Aztlán (variously translated as "White Land," "Land of White Herons," or "Place of Herons"), an allusion to their origins, probably in northwestern Mexico.

Tribute system

As the Aztecs conquered much of Mesoamerica, they developed a system that insured their dominance in the short-run. Conquered people were forced to pay tribute, surrender lands, and perform military service. Tribute included practical goods such as food, cloth, and firewood, as well as luxury items such as feathers, beads, and jewelry. Most of the luxury goods were distributed to the Aztecs noble class. The Aztecs allowed local rulers to stay in their positions to serve as tribute collectors. This allowed for Aztec political dominance without direct administrative control. In exchange, the conquered people were extended Aztec protection.

Great Speaker

At the top was the emperor who was the political ruler as well as a divine representation of the gods.

Inca

South American Indians who, at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1532, ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile. The name means "people of the sun".

Pachacuti

(Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui) the 9th Inca ruler (r. 1438 - 1471 CE) who founded their empire with conquests in the Cuzco Valley and beyond. Pachacuti is also credited with founding the site of Machu Picchu.

Yupanqui

An Inca emperor (1438-71), an empire builder who, because he initiated the swift, far-ranging expansion of the Inca state, has been likened to Philip II of Macedonia. (Similarly, his son Topa Inca Yupanqui is regarded as a counterpart of Philip's son Alexander III the Great.)

Huayna Capac

Inca emperor (ca. 1493-1527), the last undisputed ruler of the Inca empire. The son of the emperor Topa Inca and the grandson of the great Pachacuti, he ruled during the time of the first Spanish contact with Andean South America. During his reign the empire was extended northward to the Ancasmayo River, the present boundary between modern Colombia and Ecuador. Although the extent of Huayna Capac's conquests were substantially less than those of his father and grandfather, they took much longer; he was absent from the capital at Cuzco for nearly twenty years. His prolonged absence and his preference for maintaining his royal court in the city of Quito, far to the north of the imperial capital, eventually generated a schism within the Inca state.

Cahokia

A modern-day historical park in Collinsville, Illinois, enclosing the site of the largest pre-Columbian city on the continent of North America. The original name of this city has been lost - the name is a modern-day designation from the tribe that lived nearby in the 19th century - but it flourished between 600-c. 1350 CE.

Tula

Ancient capital of the Toltecs in Mexico, it was primarily important from approximately 850 to 1150 CE. Although its exact location is not certain, an archaeological site near the contemporary town of Tula in Hidalgo state has been the persistent choice of historians.

Tenochtitlan

Located on an island near the western shore of Lake Texcoco in central Mexico, was the capital city and religious center of the Aztec civilization.

Lake Texcoco

Lake in central Mexico. Originally one of the five lakes contained in Anáhuac, or the Valley of Mexico, Texcoco has been drained via channels and a tunnel to the Pánuco River since the early 17th century, until it now occupies only a small area surrounded by salt marshes 2 1/2 mi (4 km) east of Mexico City.

Chinampas

Developed by the Aztecs around the 14th century in the Valley of Mexico, primarily in the shallow lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. This region, now part of Mexico City, provided a fertile ground for the growth of the Aztec civilization. They were created by building small, rectangular plots of land on shallow lake beds, made from layers of mud, decaying vegetation, and other organic matter. These plots were surrounded by canals, allowing for easy transportation and irrigation.

Cuzco

(also Cusco or Qosqo) was the religious and administrative capital of the Inca Empire which flourished in ancient Peru between c. 1400 and 1534 CE. The Incas controlled territory from Quito to Santiago, making theirs the largest empire ever seen in the Americas and the largest in the world at that time. It had a population of up to 150,000 at its peak, was laid out in the form of a puma and was dominated by fine buildings and palaces, the richest of all being the sacred gold-covered and emerald-studded Coricancha complex which included a temple to the Inca sun god Inti. It is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Carpa Nan

A network formed by the Inca road system which became an invaluable part of the Inca empire. Roads facilitated the movement of armies, people, and goods across plains, deserts, and mountains. They connected settlements and administrative centers, and provided an important physical symbol of imperial power and control.

Quetzalcoatl

The Feathered Serpent, one of the major deities of the ancient Mexican pantheon. Representations of a feathered snake occur as early as the Teotihuacán civilization (3rd to 8th century CE) on the central plateau. At that time it seemed to have been conceived as a vegetation god—an earth and water deity closely associated with the rain god Tlaloc.

Huitzilopochtli

Aztec sun and war god, one of the two principal deities of Aztec religion, often represented in art as either a hummingbird or an eagle.

Chichén Itzá

Ruined ancient Maya city occupying an area of 4 square miles (10 square km) in south-central Yucatán state, Mexico. It is thought to have been a religious, military, political, and commercial center that at its peak would have been home to 35,000 people. The site first saw settlers in 550, probably drawn there because of the easy access to water in the region via caves and sinkholes in limestone formations.

Great Pyramid

Ancient Egyptian pyramid that is the largest of the three Pyramids of Giza, located on a rocky plateau on the west bank of the Nile River in northern Egypt. It was built by Khufu (Cheops), the second king of Egypt's 4th dynasty (c. 2543-c. 2436 BCE), and was completed in the early 25th century BCE. The Pyramids of Giza are often collectively considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and they are the last of the wonders still standing.

Human sacrifice

The offering of the life of a human being to a deity. The killing of a human being, or the substitution of an animal for a person, has often been part of an attempt to commune with a god and to participate in divine life. Human life, as the most valuable material for sacrifice, has also been offered in an attempt at expiation.

Quechua

South American Indians living in the Andean highlands from Ecuador to Bolivia. They speak many regional varieties of Quechua, which was the language of the Inca empire (though it predates the Inca) and which later became the lingua franca of the Spanish and Indians throughout the Andes.

Royal Ancestor Veneration

A common practice cross-culturally. The usual explanation for ancient ancestors is that people in past societies used them and their material correlates (architecture, iconography, tombs, and cemeteries) to validate their rights to land and resources.

Royal Ancestor Cult

A common feature of pharaonic society, aiming to provide social cohesion to extended families as well as close intermediaries with the netherworld. As active members of their respective households, ancestors were objects of veneration and care but were also subject to social obligations toward their kin.

Machu Picchu

Site of ancient Inca ruins located about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Cuzco, Peru, in the Cordillera de Vilcabamba of the Andes Mountains. It is perched above the Urubamba River valley in a narrow saddle between two sharp peaks—Machu Picchu ("Old Peak") and Huayna Picchu ("New Peak")—at an elevation of 7,710 feet (2,350 meters).

Inti

The Inca god of the sun and considered all-powerful but he was also a benevolent god and capable of great generosity. However, it could be angered and he would demonstrate his displeasure through solar eclipses which necessitated sacrifices to win back the god's good favor. Inca rulers considered themselves direct descendants of the Inca god of the sun, the patron of empire and military conquest.

Huaca

Ancient Inca and modern Quechua and Aymara religious concepts that are variously used to refer to sacred ritual, the state of being after death, or any sacred object.

Quipu

A method used by the Incas and other ancient Andean cultures to keep records and communicate information using string and knots. In the absence of an alphabetic writing system, this simple and highly portable device achieved a surprising degree of precision and flexibility. It could record dates, statistics, accounts, and even abstract ideas.

Waru Waru

An ancient practice of the ancestors of the Tiahuanaco culture, which was located on the plateau between Bolivia and Peru, above 4000 meters above sea level. n. m. It consists of an agricultural infrastructure that modifies the relief of the land by building elevated embankments on the original surface, interspersing channels to form the embankments, thereby achieving the interaction of the elements soil - water - climate - plant - man. It is especially used in areas with restrictions for agriculture, due to poor drainage, temporary water logging problems, frequent frosts and low potential for agricultural activity.

Pochteca

Long-distance, professional Aztec merchants and traders who provided the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and other major Aztec city-states with luxury and exotic items from faraway lands. They also worked as information agents for the Aztec empire, keeping tabs on their far-flung client states and uneasy neighbors such as Tlaxcallan.